Those of you who have stayed at Rymore Wood Lodge over the past year will have seen the wildlife video cameras which we installed in November 2017.
We have one camera overlooking the patio next to the wood by the downstairs bedroom and kitchen and another looking out over the lawn. Guests can view the cameras in real time on the television in the sitting room and can record their sightings on the network video recorder. The resultant MP4 files can be transferred to a memory stick and taken away at the end of the holiday. We ask that guests then wipe the video recorder for privacy reasons and indeed we double check this has been done at the end of each let.
I thought it might be interesting to post a few videos taken over the past year to show the sort of wildlife we get. This whole project is work in progress. I’ve been trying to use the auto record features in the cameras and recorder to capture animal movement but have found this quite difficult. Initially I used the camera’s movement capture facility but found I was recording every large drop of rain which fell across and near to the lens. Needless to say, this happens quite a lot in Scotland and moreover I’ve learnt the hard way that that spiders can also give you a fright if they crawl across the lens in the middle of the night!
One of the most interesting clips is also one of the first successful auto recordings. It shows an otter running across the screen. We are two or three miles from Loch Garten, which is probably where it comes from. Indeed, there are only smaller streams nearby which would not support a family of otters but we think it’s probably a first winter animal which had been ejected from its parent’s territory in Autumn and is roaming the area looking for a new territory.
The camera and recording equipment is available for anyone to use when they visit Rymore Wood Lodge if they choose to do so. Users have complete control for the sake of privacy, though we would encourage anyone who does record and save anything particularly interesting to share it on social media via the Rymore Wood Lodge Facebook page.
Gerard Paton